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Evernote, the note taking service with over 100 million users, has been pounded by an aggressive distributed denial of service cyber attack that stopped people from accessing its service and floored its operations.

DDoS attacks - the increasingly dominant form of cyber threat - involve cyber criminals attempting to disable a business' functionality, by programming or hijacking thousands of PCs to send an overwhelming amount of data to a company's systems. The attackers often pursue an agenda or demand enormous sums of money, by crippling a business’ ability to operate.

Sixty per cent of companies were hit with a DDoS attack last year, a 71 per cent increase over 12 months, according to research by real time analytics business Neustar. Nearly all of those hit were attacked multiple times. The size of DDoS attacks are also on the up, with security firm Arbor Networks reporting sizes reaching 400 Gbps - enough to flatten many networks.

Evernote (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Evernote attack locked out many users, and stopped others who logged in from being able to synchronize their notes, reminders and web clippings, from one device to another. The reason for the attack is not known, and the problem is the latest in a string of security questions Evernote has faced.

Evernote is depended on by consumers and business people, using mobiles, tablets and PCs to set themselves reminders and save useful information or web clippings. For the seemingly lucky users able to log in yesterday, the attack still disabled one of the most essential functionalities: the ability to synchronize information between devices, so the user can keep organized and up to date.

Evernote's Twitter account tells users of the problems

The cyber attack began at 14.25 PST yesterday, and continues to cause problems. Evernote spokesperson Ronda Scott told the BBC that the company would continue "to mitigate the effects".

Evernote's service is largely back up and running, though on its account it notes that "there may be a hiccup or two" throughout today while work continues to get systems up and running.

The cyber attack is the latest in a string of security problems for Evernote. Last year, hackers accessed the company's database of usernames, e-mail addresses and passwords, and in January it said it would act to improve reliability and security.